Recently I had the chance to interview director Raymond S. Persi and co-writers Craig Schulz and Robb Armstrong of the new special “Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home Franklin.” Did you know that Franklin has a namesake? I didn’t until my podcast partner Ashley and I chatted with this trio about how and when Franklin came to be a part of the Peanuts comics.
Welcome Home Franklin Interview
Can you share a little bit about Franklin’s namesake? And then how it has grown into the Peanuts Worldwide Armstrong project?
Robb Armstrong: “Yeah, I met Sparky Schulz when I was very new to the industry. I signed my deal to do ‘Jumpstart’ in 1989, believe it or not. And I was launched in just a handful of papers. I was in 40 newspapers or something by 1990. I met my hero, Sparky Schulz, when I signed my deal. I thought because we both had the same Syndicate, we were both what United Feature Syndicate back then. And, we had the same editor, I thought, ‘This is gonna be great. I’m gonna get to meet, you know, Charles Schulz’.”
“So I told my editor, I’m sitting there, you guys literally ink still drying, contract on the desk. I said, ‘Hey, Sarah, can you introduce me to Charles Schulz, please?’ She said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘I want to meet him. He’s my hero. I would love to…’ She goes, ‘No, I’m not doing that.’ I said, ‘You know, it will mean a lot to me.’ And it was pathetic. I could see on her face that it was getting sadder as I kept going. And she said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you his address. Why don’t you send him a cartoon? Mr. Schulz likes when new cartoonists send him cartoons.’ And she slid his address, One Snoopy Place.”
“I looked at this thing. thinking, ‘Okay, whatever this is. It’s named after him. I mean, he’s got the name of his creation on his street.’ Like, this just blew my mind. I sent him one of my first comic strips. And I met him years about a year-and-a-half later. Again, no help to my editor who said, ‘I’m not kidding. I’m not doing that.’ Another guy introduced me to him. I walk into One Snoopy Place and that comic strip is in a frame in his office above his desk. I thought I was seeing things. I said, and I messed up. I it was a blunder because I said, ‘Oh, I see what you did.’ It was insulting, you know, he said, ‘What do you mean?’ I say, ‘You know, I’m coming. And you frame that, I appreciate it.’ He said, ‘No. He said, Robb, Jumpstart has what Peanuts has—great characters—and great characters, that’s the whole thing.’
“I hear that sentence echoing in my voice in my head all the time. Because when you’re stuck, and when you’re at a drawing table, and it’s blank, and it’s Monday, and there’s nothing happening. He’s right. ‘That’s the whole thing.’ Four years later, we didn’t talk a lot. I don’t want to paint this picture. We weren’t golfing buddies, but he would call me sometimes, he would say, ‘What are you working on?’ ‘I’m doing this, idea that might work.’ ‘That’s good.’ You know, click. Very brief conversation, but one day he called in 1994. And he said, ‘You busy?’ I said, ‘Sparky. No. No, not busy.’ I was busy. ‘He said, I need a favor. You know that Franklin’s got no last name.’ I never thought about that. I said, ‘Okay, what’s the problem? I kind of thought Franklin was this guy’s last name?’ He goes, ‘No, no, that’s his first name. How would you feel if I gave him your last name’?”
“You guys, if you’re an actor or something. That’s like Spielberg leaning in. How would you feel by me your movie star I just did. ‘Oh, my goodness. Really? I would, such an honor. You don’t have to do this.’ What are you thinking? What do you see why? ‘It’s not fair that Charlie Brown’s got a last name and all these guys.’ So he did that. And years will go by before I would mention this. I didn’t talk about this. I didn’t tell people, ‘Hey, guess what? Charles Schulz just did?’ I didn’t tell my wife. I didn’t tell anyone. Twelve years went by, I was giving a speech at the museum in his honor, which if you haven’t seen it, go to the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa. And I was giving a speech and I told that story. Jeannie Schulz, his wife, his widow, walked up to me said, ‘I never never knew that. That’s amazing.’ And she, you know, she chastised me for keeping it a secret all those years, and began to make mention of it in her own press items and things.”
“That’s how it was when I approached her when COVID hit with this idea to do a Franklin kind of origin story, which, you know, she liked and thank God here we are, just outcome is the final product is stunning. It’s exquisite, I think, I think is a masterpiece. These guys, Craig [Shultz] and Raymond [Persi], Brian [Shultz], Schulz’s grandson, and Neil Uliano. I’m so humbled to be a part of something this superb and exquisite, honestly.”
With Peanuts, there’s so much legacy with all of the new material coming out. But, Craig, what does it meant to you to have, you know, to be able to kind of continue your dad’s work and co-write some of these new specials?
Craig Schulz: “Well, it’s been, it’s been really fun. Number one, that has also been a great responsibility, you know, trying to live up to what he did, and what the fans expect out of us. So when we put the team together, myself, my son, Brian, and Neil Uliano, and we met Raymond [Persi] for the first time, you know, we really wanted to come up with something that explored deeper than what he had done in the past with his specials, we went up a fan server to be able to see behind the scenes what the other characters were like. And we’ve done that I think, there are a couple of specials.”
“And we also want the specials to reach out to both parents and children. The same with the comic strip did, the comic strip was never meant to be written be, you know, a kid strip is always an adult strip. And that’s why the themes have an adult feel to them. And this was the same way, you know, we kind of played off obviously, the introduction of Franklin back in 1968. And we got Robb [Armstrong] involved with it to help write, to help write it and make sure it’s true to what we wanted to create. And it’s been very fun. Very fun, very special.”
Listen to the full interview on our podcast
About “Welcome Home Franklin”
The origin story for one of Peanuts’ most beloved characters, Franklin, follows how he approaches making new friends. Franklin’s family is always on the move with his dad’s military job, and everywhere he goes, Franklin finds support in a notebook filled with his grandfather’s advice on friendship. But when Franklin tries his usual strategies with the Peanuts gang, he has trouble fitting in. That’s until he learns about the neighborhood Soap Box Derby race—which, according to his grandfather, everyone loves a winner! He’s sure that winning the race will also mean winning over some new friends. All he needs is a partner, which he finds in Charlie Brown. Franklin and Charlie Brown work together to build a car and in the process become good buddies. But as the race nears, the pressure mounts—can their car and their newfound friendship make it to the finish line?
“Welcome Home Franklin” is on Apple TV+ February 16, 2024.
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